


The Sharpness

by moonstalker24



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Blood, Dark Theme, Feral Peter, Feral Stiles, M/M, Murder, Violence, and Peter sometimes eats people, lots of blood, mentions of cannibalism, minor gore, stiles gets down with his inner wildman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-16
Updated: 2015-03-16
Packaged: 2018-03-18 03:13:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3553946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonstalker24/pseuds/moonstalker24
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles and Peter take separate journeys back to the primal, instinctual part that lives inside everyone.</p>
<p>Separate journeys that eventually lead to the same place.</p>
<p>A walk into the wild, dark place and out the other side.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sharpness

**Author's Note:**

> Woo, okay, so this is entirely narrative. No dialogue at all.
> 
> I'm still not sure where it came from. What are morals? Murder, eh. Feral, get down with your inner wildman self. Peter eats people sometimes, but that's Peter so... Yeah.
> 
> I apologize for the cannibalism, but also I'm not really.
> 
> Also, I kind of killed the Sheriff, and I do feel bad about that.

**The Sharpness**

_"Monsters were wild. Monsters were strong. Monsters were fierce and free. If I was monstrous... perhaps it wasn't such a bad thing." - Sarah Diemer_

Stiles is not a stranger to horror. It is, unfortunately, the genre for which his life is apparently formatted for. There is a certain dullness to the blade digging in under his skin now; after so many years.

It is bittersweet.

When all he can taste in his mouth is ashes and blood drips from his fingertips he tries to remember what it was like before. There is so much horror now he barely remembers soft amber eyes and dark curly hair. Caring and loving and warm. He does remember green eyes, proud and wise and grounding.

But Mom is dead, has been for years, and Dad joined her last winter when he stained the pristine snow red with his lifeforce and Stiles was brought to bear the weight of it alone.

The saying states that fathers should never outlive their children. There is no saying for the pain the child goes through when the father dies too early.

Stiles becomes a being of blood and fire and ash and he suddenly knows the pain and rage that Peter Hale must have felt. The hunger and need for violence that only quiets when the hunt is on for those that caused him so much harm. Yet it is never sated, even when the lifeblood of the culprits drip down his forearms and splash against the ground.

There is no quenching it. There never will be.

He runs. He takes the gaping chasm of his hunger for blood and drives until he has no money left for gas; then he walks. At eighteen he walks deep into the woods and eventually time and nature wear away any signs of his passing.

He cannot put the sharpness back now that it has been unleashed, so he must take the sharpness to a place where the only thing that feeds it are the fish and the game he hunts with bow and arrow and knife and spear can feel it.

He stops wearing shoes around the same time as his hair grows long enough to shade his eyes from the glare of the sun. He grows a scraggly wild man beard and walks closer to nature than he ever would have otherwise. He falls back on base instinct and the need for survival and solitude.

He never hears voices this far out in the wild. He eventually stops speaking. There is no one there to hear him, so why bother when the stillness of the world says so much more than he ever could.

Eventually he stops thinking of the people he left behind. They no longer matter, they are not there. Out here it is only him and the writhing sharpness in his chest.

His back grows broad, his arms and legs tight with muscle. His skin darkens with exposure to the sun and his feet grow tough.

Most days, he finds, he can even forget to think human thoughts.

Eventually, he finds that he cannot remember that he had a name, much less what it means.

\- - -

Peter Hale leaves Beacon Hills with no thought to what he might leave behind. A nephew that hates him? A bunch of teenagers that trust him about as far as the weakest of them can throw him?

No, he doesn't care.

That ability was burned out of him long ago. His body is healed and he is no longer trapped within the cage of his own mind but the brain and the soul still slave to heal.

He has never not been broken.

He goes north, and then east. Somewhere between Washington and Idaho he encounters an Alpha and is the only one that walks away. His eyes glow red for the first time in a long time. The beast that bides its time coiled in his chest cemented back together and baying for blood.

He keeps moving. Never stops anywhere for very long. A hunter dogs his steps but he doesn't care. He just keeps moving.

Time passes differently for the wounded and broken. Shades of joy and light that once were are now like faded postcards sent by someone he lost contact with a long time ago. The kind you no longer feel the need to dust off and look at, but are still too attached to them to throw them away.

He slips his skin as often as he can. Skin giving way to dark fur and fingers giving way to paws and claws and the sharpness of fangs in his mouth. He hunts in this skin. This skin that feels more like his own than the feet he was born with. It is nice to shed the shade of humanity and eat his prey where he kills it.

He stays away from humans in this skin. Minimizes the damage by staying far, far away because he prefers it when he and the slavering beast inside his chest are one. Prefers a life of tooth and claw with the hot, coppery taste of blood coating his tongue.

He never goes back to Beacon Hills.

\- - -

The next time they encounter each other, Peter is in his wolf skin. He has been for months. Stiles has wrapped furs around his body to keep warm and carries a spear. It is the dead of winter, deep in Stiles' wilderness and the hunter has finally caught up to Peter.

There is pain and blood and churned up snow and in the end Stiles and Peter dig a shallow grave in the frozen ground and leave nature to do what it wills.

They leave the site of brutality and the shredded remains of anything human of Peter behind them when they leave.

Peter remains a hulking, red eyed wolf and Stiles remains as a man that never speaks. They recognize each other, lean in and know and see the sharpness each of them carries. There is no acknowledgement of what the other may have once meant to them. There is no need.

There is only violence and survival left. Instinct says to trust. Instinct is all they really have left.

They wind away the winter. There is a small cave Stiles claimed as his own long before he lost his voice. They sleep curled up around each other and share their kills. Peter becomes an Alpha with a pack. It is a small pack, but this is fine because between himself, Stiles and the sharpness there is no room for anyone else.

Stiles weaves his fingers into dark fur and he knows what this creature is and he knows that there are things in this world that are scarier. He is not afraid of this familiar monster. Not when his own lurks under his skin.

As spring begins to thaw out the world, Peter spends more time in his human skin. For Stiles this means little more than rearranging how they sleep. Peter's hair grows long to match Stiles'. His beard comes in thick instead of scraggly.

By the end of spring they are mated.

Summer burns hot and they spend more time naked than not. There is no one around to see them. They are content in what and who they have become. The sharpness inside them becomes a honed blade, wielded precisely and with a strength behind it gained only through blood and time.

Stiles freckles, Peter turns brown.

They forget that the world is bigger than their wilderness. They have not seen humans in so long why should they care what happens outside their sphere? So long as it does not encroach on what is theirs there is no need to worry.

Humanity is an amorphous being. It trickles into the cracks and fills them in and it gets everywhere. Like sand.

People become a thing to avoid. They divert their paths around to avoid hikers and camping spots. They adjust. Peter slips his human skin and when they are seen they look to most people like a man and his dog. They are only ever seen from afar so no one ever notices that the man wears furs instead of clothes. That he carries a spear and a knife sharper than anything else. That the dog is not a dog, that it is a wolf. That it has red eyes far too intelligent and frightening to belong to a mere animal.

They don't encounter hunters until late in the season, but the hunters come out worse for wear. There is blood and screaming and scattered pieces. Stiles is red from head to toe and he leaves the corpse where it fell. Peter eats more of his opponent than either will ever acknowledge. Attempting to kill him forfeits you as his next meal.

The third hunter makes it out of the woods wild eyed and bloody and raving.

It draws attention. The kind of attention that no one ever wants.

There is another hunter that tracked Peter up the coast who has somewhere to look now. There are others that notice it. The survivor gets his picture and story in the paper. The Park Rangers find the bodies weeks later. What's left of them.

Blood and death and mangled corpses catch a lot of attention.

Eventually something will have to give.

For Stiles and Peter they continue to exist. They hunt and they fight and they play. Peter slips his skin more often, even in the bright heat of summer. There are more humans in their forest now. The sharpness in both of them shifts, unsettled. An awareness settles into their bones.

They are in danger.

There is a tightness in Stiles' chest now. Something that vaguely makes him think of something from before. There is an uncomfortable awareness settling into him. A feeling that creeps in on the edges and makes him jump at things that he thinks might hurt him. He doesn't like it.

Peter tears at the world with a viciousness. He does not want to be human again. He wants to stay here where he is free. Stay here in the wild with his mate. Where they wander and run and hunt. Life is simpler here. His only concerns being where his next meal is and Stiles.

But the hunters come. They press in on their territory and it starts to get smaller. They make wider berths around the one or two tiny towns on the edges of their world. They are being hemmed in, confined.

They are given two choices. Leave this place, where they have found the most peace. Where they found each other. Or give in and bathe in more blood in confrontation.

The sharpness wreaths within them, and there isn't a choice. Not really. There hasn't been in far too long. Stiles is man, strong, lethal, tired. Peter is wolf, teeth and claws and pain.

The hunter comes. He has four others with them and both of the wild ones know _he_ _should have brought more_.

Five is not enough to put them down. It never will be. Their will to survive is seconded only to their will to see the other survive. The hunters have no chance, but they do not go down easily.

Flashing claws and teeth bared. Flashing steel and the singing of wood whipping through the air. The report of weapons startles the birds from the trees. The forest goes quiet and the air is scented with gunpowder and wolfsbane and smoke.

Stiles takes a bullet meant for his mate. He is human, can withstand the aconite. Peter snarls through the blood and the throat in his jaws. One takes a spear through his middle and he gurgles his last breaths through the hole in his lungs.

The hunter meets his death at the gleaming teeth of a wolf and his feral, wild mate.

They retreat to their den after cleaning up in the river. Stiles removes the bullet from his arm and Peter wraps it with care. They curl up in their nest of furs, safe in the darkness as night falls. Inside Stiles, the jagged pieces of who he used to be shift and move. Peter holds him all the tighter.

There is little choice now. The hunters will be found. They will have to leave this place. This haven that has succored and comforted them both. This place that defines them now more than anything else ever has.

But where will they go?

\- - -

The back window of the small sporting goods store shatters. The men that climb through it are wild. They do not fit this example of civilization. They are bearded with tangled hair. One is naked, the other clad scantly. They move with precision. Caution. Each movement is measured and wary.

 Clothes are first. They are uncomfortable and confining and they smell strange. Stiles doesn't like them. They are just one more indication that everything is changing again. No matter how much he doesn't like it, it feels familiar. Comfortable in a way that he doesn't think they have any right to be.

They wash using the sinks in the restroom and several bars of homemade soap that smell vaguely like tree sap. Peter chooses a large hunting knife, hones the blade and gives both of them a close shave and a haircut. Stiles watches him do it with lidded eyes.

They look civilized.

Shoes. Boots that confine hardened feet used to being able to feel whatever might be coming their way. Feet that are used to feeling dirt and grass and rocks. Both men hate the shoes.

They leave through the window they came through. Peter unearths the skill to hotwire a car from deep within the place inside him that still remembers human things. The car trundles out of town in the gray light of pre-dawn, heading away.

They do not know where they are going, but it is time to be human again.

This time, they are together.

_.. fin .._


End file.
